Summary of 2023 in Juneau

Here we are at the end of another awesome season!  While the end of the season this year was a little (ok, a lot) underwhelming we are now officially past the two failed coho years and next year should be a banner return.  This means the Sheep Creek for cohos will once again become a thing and the channel will fill up with countless hatchery silvers.

Even though the coho run didn't turn out around here almost all of the other fisheries this year were great.  The beach Dollies really heated up in mid-May and stayed consistently good until early July.  Kings showed up early this June and stayed around in fishable numbers until about the first week in July.  Of course, just because they were there doesn't mean they were easy to catch, but that part of why king fishing is fun right?  Once the king run died down the chums and then pinks showed up in force.  There were more salmon around in the creeks this year than we have seen in a long time and the run sizes greatly exceeded expectations.  This is part of the reason that the beading was so good this summer.  Once the Dollies left the salt, they had ample amounts of food to gorge themselves on for the remaining months of summer.

Lastly, the trout fishing has been great around town.  While you rarely catch the same numbers of trout as you would if you were targeting Dollies, they are around in good enough numbers that targeting them is doable.  Word on the street is the Mendenhall River flood breached into the Dredge Lakes area and the potential for new fishing opportunities might exist.  We will have to see how it plays out next year.

We appreciate everyone's support every year and we are extremely grateful to have such a good community.  There were a lot of new faces in the shop this season and it was truly a privilege to help get all our new anglers hooked (pun intended) on this wacky sport of fly fishing.  To our long-time clients and supporters than you for the continued support!

Winter is unfortunately not a great time to fish around here, so this year we are going to try and keep people engaged and do a lot more fly tying this winter.  Starting in December and continuing through the end of March we will be starting nightly fly-tying nights at the fly shop.  Previous tying will be helpful, but not necessary, especially if you can make the first few.  As the winter goes on the patterns will get progressively harder.  Keep an eye on our social media for dates and specifics as they get closer, as well as any other events that pop up this winter.

For now, it's time to get the freezer full and start thinking snow so we can all use our season passes!  Don't forget to go bug Mike in the rental/repair shop at Eaglecrest this winter.  Cheers everyone!

The Crew at AFFG